The Sino-Indian border is tranquil and both sides are maintaining the status quo, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said here on Thursday. Pointing out that both sides had their own perceptions about the boundary, Mr. Menon said each side treated the other’s crossing over as an incursion. But the important thing was whether there had been a change in the pattern of incursions and whether it was taking place in new places. The answer to both was in the negative, he said, while taking questions at the release of the book “India-China relations – The border issue and beyond” co-authored by Mohan Guruswamy and Zorawar Daulet Singh.
“Both sides maintain the status quo. We don’t see changes in the pattern by either side,” Mr. Menon added.
While there was a border issue there was no border dispute with China unlike with Pakistan. The last casualty that took place was in October 1975 and even that was an accident.
Read also Indian Army fears China attack by 2017, by Rahul Singh on Hindustan Times:
The Indian military fears a ‘Chinese aggression’ in less than a decade. A secret exercise, called ‘Divine Matrix’, by the army’s military operations directorate has visualised a war scenario with the nuclear-armed neighbour before 2017.
“A misadventure by China is very much within the realm of possibility with Beijing trying to position itself as the only power in the region. There will be no nuclear warfare but a short, swift war that could have menacing consequences for India,” said an army officer, who was part of the three-day war games that ended on Wednesday.
In the military’s assessment, based on a six-month study of various scenarios before the war games, China would rely on information warfare (IW) to bring India down on its knees before launching an offensive.
The war games saw generals raising concerns about the IW battalions of the People’s Liberation Army carrying out hacker attacks for military espionage, intelligence collection, paralysing communication systems, compromising airport security, inflicting damage on the banking system and disabling power grids. “We need to spend more on developing information warfare capability,” he said.
And Red Dragon rising – China adopts ‘military strategy of active defence’ by Gurmeet Kanwal and Monika Chansoria:
IN keeping with its past practice, China released its sixth White Paper on National Defence in January 2009. Though it is an improvement on previously published White Papers in terms of transparency, there still is considerable opacity in revealing key defence policies and China’s strategic outlook and its annual defence expenditure.
Beijing had estimated its defence expenditure for 2008 at about US $61 billion. This was much lower that the estimate made by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. According to SIPRI, China is likely to spend a staggering $140 billion on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), its navy and air force this year.
The Chinese leadership believes that “China’s security situation has improved steadily,” although China is still confronted with “long-term, complicated and diverse security threats and challenges.”
The White Paper cautions the Chinese people that China is facing “the superiority of the developed countries in economy, science and technology as well as military affairs… and faces strategic manoeuvers and containment from the outside.”
Although, China continues to reiterate that its defence policy is purely defensive in nature, the White Paper reveals that it is working towards implementing a “military strategy of active defence.”
While formulating its military strategy of active defence for the 21st century, China is focussing on four crucial components: emphasising the prevention and deterrence of crises and wars; building hi-tech military capabilities to win local wars in conditions of ‘informationisation’; enhancing the ability to counter various security threats; and, improving its military mobilisation and logistics mechanism.
